On the seventeenth of October, the newly-harvested rice is offered at the great Shrine of the Sun-Goddess in the province of Ise; and in a country where rice is the most important food, such an occasion is naturally celebrated as a national holiday. On the twentieth, the fête of Daikoku and Ebisu, the two gods of fortune, is celebrated in many merchants’ houses with a great feast to which friends and relatives are invited.
The third of November is the Emperor’s birthday. His Majesty reviews the troops early in the morning and holds a banquet at noon, to which the Imperial Princes, high government officials, and the foreign ambassadors and ministers are invited. A salute of a hundred and eight guns is fired in the bay; and in the evening the minister for foreign affairs gives a ball to high officials, the diplomatic corps, and other persons of rank and position, Japanese and foreign. In this month the chrysanthemums are in full bloom; at Dangozaka, not far from Uyeno Park, are exhibited scenes from well-known plays or representations of passing events, in which the figures are clothed with chrysanthemum flowers of various colours. They attract large crowds; but the finest flowers are to be seen in the palace-grounds at Akasaka, where the Imperial chrysanthemum party is given, and at the mansions of noblemen and men of wealth. This month is also noted for the maple-leaves, which, when they become crimson, are highly admired; and many people make pilgrimages to the banks of the Takinogawa, a few miles north of Uyeno Park, where they are to be seen in great profusion.
In December people are too busy with the year-end settlement of accounts and preparations for the New Year to indulge in festivities, though there are not a few easy-going men who get up towards the close of the month what are called dinners for forgetting the passing year. From the middle of the month, fairs are held in different parts of the city for the sale of articles required for the New Year’s decorations and battledores and other things for the New Year’s amusements. Towards the end of the month, year-end visits are paid among friends and relatives; the New Year’s decorations are put up; and everywhere preparations are made for the New Year’s festivities. At midnight of the last day, the temple-bell sounds a hundred and eight strokes to announce the passing of the old year.
CHAPTER XXII.
SPORTS AND GAMES.
Hunting—Horse-racing—Fishing—Outdoor games—Billiards—Sugoroku—Iroha-cards—Ode-cards—Ken—Japanese chess—The moves—Use of prisoners—The game of go—Its principle—Camps—Counting—“Flowers-cards”—Players—How to play—Claims for hands—Claims for combinations made—Reckoning.
FIELD sports cannot be said to thrive in Japan. Fox-hunting, as practised in England, is unknown; indeed, hunting on a grand scale seldom takes place. Every year a large number of shooting licenses are issued; but reckless shooting has made game so scarce in the neighbourhood of Tokyo that any one in search of good sport must go a considerable distance from town. Game preserves are also very few in number, for there is scarcely one man of means in Tokyo who keeps such grounds. Nearly all the small birds are protected.
Horse-racing came into vogue soon after the Russian war. Many horse-race companies were formed; they throve as they sold pari-mutuel tickets on which they took a commission. The races became enormously popular; and people who knew nothing of horses or racing rushed in crowds to the races to buy these tickets. The thing became barefaced gambling, and so great was the scandal caused by these races that the sale of pari-mutuel tickets was prohibited, with the result that the races were entirely deserted and the shares of these companies fell from ten times their face-value to almost nil. Remedial measures were tried, but without success. These races had at first been encouraged by the authorities as it was believed that they would help to improve the breed of horses in Japan; but there was little prospect of that object being achieved, for the frequenters of the race-courses did not appear to take much interest in horse-racing beyond the opportunities it gave for gambling.
